My mother, who is a very successful entrepreneur, faced a lot of criticism from the family when she was working as a journalist after her marriage.
Ashaz Zaheer
New Delhi: “A woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton, leader of the women’s rights movement, said these words while working towards women suffrage in the 1880s. In this period, women, for the first time, actively started to seek rights in society.
The period of the late 19th and early 20th century, throughout the western world, during which women fought for equality and suffrage came to be known as the first wave of feminism. But are the rights that these movements proclaimed and pioneered in congruence with social reality?
Equality and the Historical Perception of Women
The primary characteristic of an egalitarian society is equality; a characteristic that consistently fails to be represented in society with regards to gender.
In my opinion, society has always looked at the female gender as one of inferiority, and this inferiority has been upheld by people from every class of society, be they educated or uneducated; landlords or peasants.
Historically, even scholars in various fields held the same view. Karl Marx is often looked down upon by feminist scholars for failing to acknowledge the dimension of gender.
One of the most prominent ways in which he does this is by failing to account for housework in his studies and focusing on factory labor work. The founder of the school of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, has also faced major criticism for attaching concepts like penis envy to women and viewing them as psychologically inferior versions of men.
Women have been an active victim of dehumanisation, exploitation, and implicit ownership by men and are often reduced to subjects of everyday colonisation. One can connect this reality with the hypocrisy that women face in society, wherein society often lauds women for achieving something of note in society, but that same society is actively restricting other women from reaching that zenith.
The Indian Gender Paradox
According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center , “How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society”, 88% of Indian adults believe that a woman should always obey her husband; and when asked whose responsibility it should be to take care of children, 34% of the respondents said it should solely be the wife’s.
Keeping these responses in mind, it was also observed that in many questions, the subjects did respond with a sense of equality. For example, when asked about who should be responsible for making financial decisions, 73% said it should be both the man and the woman.
This duality is connected to the social expectations that I have seen people have in society from women and how they are expected to be “ideal Indian women”.
A girl from a very young age is expected to do well in school as well as be an active participant in house chores. When the girl grows up, she is asked to be independent and smart, but the moment she completes her basic education, the family starts to look for a matrimonial match for her.
The Misconception of Feminism
Another point I would like to make about feminism is its flawed perception in society. Many people consider feminism to be an inherently misandrist. What I have seen in my surroundings is that the people who don’t support feminist views are usually the ones who falsely perceive it.
Research conducted by an international team of researchers led by Dr Aífe Hopkins-Doyle from the University of Surrey debunked this misconception of feminism being a misandrist political movement; he summarised his findings by saying, “for decades, the feminist movement has been dogged by the perception that it is ‘anti-men’ and that feminists ‘hate men.’
This ‘Misandry Myth’ has been used to delegitimise and discredit the movement and has deterred women from joining it, and motivated men to oppose it – sometimes with violence.”
I hold the opinion that this perception of feminism being “anti-man” distracts us from the main issue. This is one of the primary reasons why feminist movements are often discarded, or rather, turn out to be largely unsuccessful in the context of contemporary Indian movements.
When Equality Becomes Personal
To conclude, all these problems faced by women in society are something that I have observed in my personal life as well.
My mother, who is a very successful entrepreneur, faced a lot of criticism from the family when she was working as a journalist after her marriage. She faced and overcame this backlash and made the people who criticised her aware of how the freedom to occupy should not be limited to the male gender.
Her experience also reinforced something that statistics and academic debates can sometimes obscure: gender inequality is ultimately experienced in ordinary moments. It exists in the expectations placed upon daughters, the choices questioned by families, the careers women are discouraged from pursuing and the independence they are sometimes expected to surrender.
The progress made by feminist movements cannot be dismissed. Women today possess legal and political rights that previous generations fought intensely to secure. But the existence of rights does not automatically guarantee their exercise. The real test of equality begins where the law ends: inside homes, workplaces, institutions and everyday social interactions.
Until equality is not merely something guaranteed on paper but something women can experience without negotiation, suspicion or social punishment, the distance between women’s rights and women’s reality will remain.
(Ashaz Zaheer is a B.A. LL.B. student at O.P. Jindal Global University with an interest in writing, feminism, gender equality, and the intersection of law and society.)
